TOM FRANCIS
REGRETS THIS ALREADY

First Time Using An iPhone

When the iPhone was announced, I laughed at the notion of spending SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS on a phone. You should imagine that laugh attenuating, bitterly, over six and a half years of me using the cheapest object Nokia can produce, until Gunpoint launched. Then I stopped, and thought, “Huh, I can actually afford to be one of the assholes who have these things now.”

It’s also a big part of the gaming world I’ve been missing out on, and my current phone, er, doesn’t work in America. So I felt like I could justify this as my first proper extravagance.

Having never owned an Apple product before, but having heard a lot about their design, I thought it might be interesting to share my first experience attempting to use an iPhone 5. I was wrong, it was really long and boring. But at some point I just had to start writing it down just to get the baffling chain of madness out of my head.

Start

Your phone can track your location, do you want it to?

Yes! I’m particularly excited about knowing where the fuck I am on maps.

It asks for my password.

I painstakingly type my compulsorily multi-case, numbers-and-letters password out on the tiny keyboard, which doesn’t go into full size mode if you turn the phone on its side.

Open up Safari.

Safari wants to track your location!

Yes, to this too.

Let’s look for something on the internet!

The address bar won’t let me use spaces, and there’s no search bar.

I manually type in google.com for the first time since 1996.

I decide the thing I should be searching for is a browser that isn’t this one, so I try Firefox.

Firefox only supports Google’s operating system, Android.

Search for Google’s browser. Theirs does support Apple’s operating system – hurray!

I’m taken to Chrome on the app store.

This is a page with absolutely no link or button or text that says anything to the effect of download, install, get, acquire, have it, yes, accept, put this thing on my phone. It’s just info and shots.

I keep looking. I’m a veteran of Windows software download sites, I’ve spent thousands of man hours looking for Download buttons. Surely I can crack this.

Still looking.

In desperation, I try tapping literally everything on screen – the word ‘Chrome’, the Chrome icon, the word ‘Google’, even the word ‘FREE’. Nothing does anything.

After much more puzzlement, I eventually discover you DO have to touch the word ‘FREE’ in order to make it go away, to reveal an ‘Install’ button that is invisibly hidden behind it. The first time I pressed that it presumably just didn’t register.

It asks for my password.

I painstakingly type my compulsorily multi-case, numbers-and-letters password out on the tiny keyboard, which doesn’t go into full size mode if you turn the phone on its side.

It asks for my credit card details.

Am I buying it now? Was the FREE thing just sort of theoretical? Does Chrome have in-app purchases?

Also, didn’t I just sign in to my Apple account, twice, which I stored all my card details on?

I don’t have time to enter it all on this tiny keyboard right now, so I give up and decide to try maps.

This time Safari has added a Search bar next to the Address bar anyway, so it’s usable for now.

I know I should get the Google Maps app because the Apple one is apparently bad, but I haven’t learnt how you search for new apps yet, so I go to the web version and follow the redirect.

Google wants to track your location!

Yes.

The app page, again, has no download or install link, but I know the trick now: tap FREE to find the secret button!

It asks for my credit card details.

I’m on a bus at this point, so I type them in. Some are already filled in, but it’s forgotten a few.

It asks me to create a security question. I say “Not now”

It takes me back to the App page – nothing’s changed, it’s not installing.

I try again.

It asks for my password.

I painstakingly type my compulsorily multi-case, numbers-and-letters password out on the tiny keyboard, which doesn’t go into full size mode if you turn the phone on its side.

It asks me to create a security question.

OK, I get the passive-aggressive hint, you’re saying I have to. ‘Continue’.

It asks for my password.

Jesus Christ.

I painstakingly type my compulsorily multi-case, numbers-and-letters password out on the tiny keyboard, which doesn’t go into full size mode if you turn the phone on its side.

I choose a security question from the list, and type my answer.

It asks me to pick a security question. I have to pick THREE.

This is actually a problem – you only have about 6 to select from, you can’t enter your own, and I’ve already chosen the only one I can answer. The rest are things like “Who was your favourite movie star when you were a teenager?” I didn’t have one. Every other question either doesn’t apply to me or is asking something I don’t remember now, let alone in a year’s time when I have to answer this to get my password back.

As I’m deciding, the screen shuts off.

I wake it up and unlock it, and I’m back on the app store.

I go through the Settings to see if I can get back to where I was setting up these questions. There’s nothing about Security in the Settings.

I try on my PC, logging into my Apple account and checking Security. There, I’ve already set a security question long ago, different to the one I just chose on my phone, and it only needs one. In fact there’s no way to set more. It seems to be completely separate, despite being for the username, password and account.

Back on the phone, the only way I can think to get back to that screen is to try installing something from the App Store again.

It asks for my password.

I painstakingly type my compulsorily multi-case, numbers-and-letters password out on the tiny keyboard, which doesn’t go into full size mode if you turn the phone on its side.

It asks me to create a security question. Yes, great, that’s what I’m here to do.

It asks for my password.

Fin

I’m not as grouchy about this as it probably sounds – I generally assume all technology will cause me about this much hassle to set up. This was worse than most, but I don’t really mind. I’m just more baffled than ever by the way so many people talk about Apple’s interface design and ‘seamless’, ‘magic’, ‘just works’ user experience. There must just be a set of people who see the word ‘FREE’ and instinctively poke it, and for them, the rest of this presumably makes sense too.